Washington - Mitt Romney faced accusations on Monday of deep disarray
within his campaign after an explosive report laid out how the
Republican White House hopeful has stumbled badly in recent weeks.
The chatter erupted late on Sunday when the Washington news website Politico posted a comprehensive, behind-the-scenes look at Romney's faltering campaign.
The
report focused on how chief strategist Stuart Stevens morphed from
Romney's top advisor to the major scapegoat for the team's series of
missteps.
Romney, a multimillionaire investor and former governor
of Massachusetts, had drawn neck and neck with President Barack Obama
during the summer campaign season, but with less than two months to go
until the November 6 election, polls show the challenger trailing
behind.
Politico dissected Romney's campaign battle strategy,
laying out how the candidate put his faith for the most part in an
impulsive advisor who has ended up serving three crucial roles himself:
top strategist, ad maker and speech writer.
It said Stevens
scrapped two early versions of Romney's Republican convention speech in
Tampa, bypassing the campaign's speech writers in Boston and writing
much of it himself.
The speech was seen as helping to humanize
Romney, but it lacked key elements such as a salute to US troops or any
mention of al-Qaeda or Afghanistan.
Romney received no
substantial boost from the convention, and some conservatives ripped the
campaign for allowing Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood to ramble on about
Obama - an act which Stevens reportedly greenlighted - minutes before
the most important speech of Romney's life.
Stevens defended the campaign's performance.
No love lost
"Like
all campaigns, we have good days and bad days. I'm happy to take
responsibility for the bad days," he told Politico, adding that Romney
was doing better than many pundits have been saying.
There
appears to be no love lost within the campaign for the adrenaline junkie
with a long resume of successful political consulting, speech writing
and strategising for former president George W Bush and others.
"The
campaign is filled with people who spend a lot of their time either
avoiding [Stevens] or resisting him," a Romney campaign insider told
Politico.
But the article cited sources close to Romney as saying
the blame cannot be pinned entirely on Stevens, and that Romney bears
responsibility for decisions he personally oversaw.
"Romney
associates are baffled that such a successful corporate leader has
created a team with so few lines of authority or accountability," the
report said.
A Republican operative was quoted in the piece as
saying that Stevens has a Hollywood aura that leaves conservatives
distrustful. He has travelled the world, advised actor George Clooney on
TV productions, taken steroids in order to compete in extreme sports,
and written a campaign memoir, according to the operative.
"He's a smart, capable guy but he sends bad signals" to conservatives, the operative said.
A Romney official insisted Stevens is likely to stay put.
"None
of this is going to be fixed. This is the organization, and this is who
Mitt is betting on to win," he said. "There aren't going to be further
changes."
Senior Romney advisor Ed Gillespie held a conference
call with reporters on Monday without mentioning the Politico report,
stressing instead Romney's refocus on economic issues.
While he
said Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan were not "rolling out new
policy" this week, they will "reinforce more specifics about the Romney
plan for a stronger middle class", Gillespie said.
- SAPA